Notable African-American inventors discussed at Monday event

Carol Becton, a retired educator, spoke about an assortment of African-American inventors Monday at the monthly Lunch and Learn session in New Bern.

Chuck Beckley/Sun Journal

By Sue Book, Sun Journal Staff

Published: Monday, February 24, 2014 at 06:05 PM.

African-American inventors have quietly played a significant role in the nation’s progress in almost every field.

Those who participated in a monthly Lunch and Learn session on Monday heard some of the individual stories from sponsoring New Bern Historical Society Board of Directors member Carol Becton, a retired educator whose last post was principal of Trent Park Elementary School.

Becton, a New Bern native and wife of the late Capt. James E. Becton of the New Bern Police Department, talked about an assortment of more obscure African-American contributors. She also helped define the significance of Black History Month itself.

Becton thanked John Leyes and David French for their assistance in gathering and preparing the Powerpoint for her presentation based in part on the book “What Color is My World — The Lost History of African American Inventors,” co-authored by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld.

“There is a Negro spiritual entitled ‘O Lord Remember Me!’ that makes me reflect upon Carter G. Woodson, the man regarded as the father of modern black history with much admiration, gratitude, respect and pride,” Becton said.

“Had he not envisioned the celebration of establishing a week to take pause throughout our nation and recognize the treasured contributions of Negroes, we may not even be assembled here today,” she told participants of the event, which had been rescheduled because the snow.

Many of the books and documents he wrote and gathered now constitute the Carter G. Woodson Collection in the Library of Congress, Becton said.

African-American inventors have quietly played a significant role in the nation’s progress in almost every field.

Those who participated in a monthly Lunch and Learn session on Monday heard some of the individual stories from sponsoring New Bern Historical Society Board of Directors member Carol Becton, a retired educator whose last post was principal of Trent Park Elementary School.

Becton, a New Bern native and wife of the late Capt. James E. Becton of the New Bern Police Department, talked about an assortment of more obscure African-American contributors. She also helped define the significance of Black History Month itself.

Becton thanked John Leyes and David French for their assistance in gathering and preparing the Powerpoint for her presentation based in part on the book “What Color is My World — The Lost History of African American Inventors,” co-authored by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld.

“There is a Negro spiritual entitled ‘O Lord Remember Me!’ that makes me reflect upon Carter G. Woodson, the man regarded as the father of modern black history with much admiration, gratitude, respect and pride,” Becton said.

“Had he not envisioned the celebration of establishing a week to take pause throughout our nation and recognize the treasured contributions of Negroes, we may not even be assembled here today,” she told participants of the event, which had been rescheduled because the snow.

Many of the books and documents he wrote and gathered now constitute the Carter G. Woodson Collection in the Library of Congress, Becton said.

Several African-American inventors made huge contributions to electricity and electric light, Becton said, including Henry T. Sampson, the first black man to earn a doctorate in nuclear engineering in 1967.

In 1971, he invented the gamma electric cell, which converts radiation directly into electricity. Gamma electric cells are used in the 442 nuclear power reactors in the world — 104 of which are in the U.S. — to generate 14 percent of the world’s power and 20 percent of U.S. electricity.

Granville T. Woods was known as the “Black Thomas Edison,” she said, and Edison did try to hire him and Alexander Graham Bell bought his ‘telegraphony’ invention.

His most notable personal patents were the steam boiler furnace for trains and his 1887 patent for the induction telegraph that allowed moving trains to send and receive messages from railroad stations.

In addition to Sampson and Woods, another African-American inventor contributed to the science of electricity — Lewis Howard Latimer.

After serving in the Civil War, he worked with a patent law firm specializing in inventor patents, became a draftsman and was hired by Bell, then assisted him in patenting his invention just in the nick of time.

Working with others, Latimer developed a critical wiring element for the incandescent light bulb and later worked with Edison in perfecting and protecting Edison’s inventions related to incandescent lighting.

Medicine, and particularly heart medicine, has benefitted from the work of African-Americans in that field.

Daniel Hale Williams was one of the first doctors to successfully perform open heart surgery. Starting work as a barber, he attended the Classical Academy to study bass violin and met Dr. Henry Palmer, a Civil War hero knows as ‘the fighting surgeon,’ and was inspired to study medicine.

Fighting racial prejudice as well, Williams founded Provident Hospital in Chicago, the first non-segregated hospital, which included a nursing school for African-Americans, and, in 1893 performed open heart surgery without losing the patient to infection.

Later appointed chief surgeon at Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., Williams further developed antiseptic methods to prevent infection.

Dr. Charles Drew was the first African-American to receive a doctor of medical science degree from Columbia University. Specializing in blood, he developed the concept of large scale blood banks, a revolutionary system for storing blood plasma.

Establishing the banks also required him to campaign for acceptance of the idea that there was no such thing as white blood and black blood. The blood banks saved many lives during World War II. Drew subsequently established and served as first director of the American Red Cross Blood Bank.

“How appropriate that not only do we now celebrate the month of February as National African-American History Month, but also as National Heart Month,” Becton said. “We rejoice in the life-saving invention of the work that Dr. Charles Drew did with blood plasma and the Blood Bank, and we ‘hail’ the name of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, as the founder of the first interracial hospital and the first surgeon in the world to successfully perform open heart surgery (on James Cornish, who went on to live a full and normal life) and as one of the founders and first vice president of the National Medical Association.”

Sue Book can be reached at 252-635-5665 or sue.book@newbernsj.com. Follow her on Twitter@SueJBook.